A herdsman who lived in the desert near Jerusalem 700 years before the birth of Jesus Christ clearly saw what is going on now: “"The days are coming," declares the Sovereign Lord, "when I will send a famine through the land — not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. Men will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the Lord” (Amos 8:11-12). Amos saw famine and spiritual despair of people who were dying. As he started to realize it, his heart hurt more and more. These people were dying because of lack of truth.

The similar state of people’s hearts we saw in Kirov’s region. Though judging from the worldly point of view we can say that this region is all right as far as spiritual sphere is concerned. This region is multinational: Russians, Tartars, Udmurts, Maris live here. Each people can worship their god, go to their temples whether it be the Orthodox church, a mosque or they can practice any heathen religion. People seem to be friendly to one another, respecting cultural background and religious views.

Our group was invited to the cultural centre of nations’ friendship “Mir”. The director of this centre was interested more in the spiritual side of our creative work. Being a Tartar and a wife of a Russian she is lost between Islam and Orthodox Christianity. Her search of God was so intense that she called our meeting God’s providence.

A testimony of a Mari woman, Nadezhda, convinced us in the strong necessity of going to Kirov’s region. This woman lives in a Mari village, loves her people and supports traditional heathen religious views of the Mari. But her heart is searching God and heathenism with its rituals can’t satisfy her spiritual searching. Once being deeply unsatisfied that nearly led her to an attempt of suicide, she saw a dream. There were two Christs that were calling her to come. She didn’t know who was the true God. Being entangled in doubts she started attending the Orthodox church but then would come back to her heathen rituals. Then she fall ill and again saw a dream: people in heaven’s space suits come and heal her. At that time our group prayed about the Kirov city and it’s region and got God’s guidance to go there.

We didn’t know these people, but God knew them all right. Only His limitless love to the dying and the lost could lead to such an extraordinary meeting. Nadezhda’s village fellows came to the meeting. The hearts were united by Urmurt and Mari songs and dances. The natural comes first, and after that the spiritual. After the musical part we preached to these people the Gospel of love of Jesus Christ, the Gospel of our God, Creator and Caretaker of all nations. The people literally soaked in the good news, many of them thought it over and accepted the prayer so that God could open their eyes to the truth.

After the concert in Vyatskije Polyani we had another amazing meeting. The local Udmurt ensemble “Tchiptchirgan” was in raptures at our unusual music. They were interested in everything: how our group was created, who is the author of the songs that they had heard for the first time, who we are, where we work and how we can keep such faith in God. We had a marvelous time together at the table. We told the testimonies and stories of our coming to God, sang again and again. At the end of the meeting we had a sermon about the cross of Jesus Christ and a prayer of repentance. We thanked God that we had heard His calling and had been able to participate in His miraculous deed of saving people’s souls.

The Udmurt ministry of the church “Philadelphia”